


in the end

by alleged (alleged_grey_warden)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Gen, Unhappy Ending, slight implied Fenbela
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 23:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12047007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alleged_grey_warden/pseuds/alleged
Summary: In the rush of battle, killing and saving each other are tightly entwined, each an action performed with as much ferocity and desperation as the other. Merrill's convinced it's because deep down, they all mean something to each other. After six years, they have to. Don't they?(She wonders if she can close her eyes, and wait for it to be over.)





	in the end

The Gallows smell of fire and blood. The air is thick with smoke, thick enough to choke on as Merrill’s chest heaves from the last fight. The rush of battle dies down for a moment, but there is too much chaos to gather herself. Figures scramble through the haze. Shrieks pierce through the chaos, followed by the sickening sound of metal cleaving through flesh.

The sound of armored boots is what finally draws her attention. She whips her head up, and can feel the group move to do the same. Without looking, she can feel Isabela raise her knives and Varric ready his crossbow. The sound of armor leads leads her gaze to an archway, to several helmeted, faceless enemies–and one she recognizes.

Merrill wonders if she can close her eyes, and wait for it to be over.

* * *

Merrill had to stand in shock, breathless and dizzied. The green and gray of Sundermount stopped spinning after a moment, and she looked down.

“Fenris!” she practically squawked.  “You saved me?”

Fenris spasmed and let out a pained grunt from where he lay. She hadn’t even seen him move. One moment there was a thug running at her with a sword, and the next there was Fenris’s back, Fenris’s glowing markings, Fenris’s blood. The thug might have poked another hole in him really quick, but Isabela took him down in a second, leaving him free to topple over.

Merrill couldn’t help but clap as the moment slowed down and she realized what had happened. “Fenris, that’s so sweet!”

“I’ll say!” Hawke beamed. “That was just… dashing!”

Fenris, on the ground, had managed to turn his neck in Merrill’s direction, and spat a curse. “Healing,” he managed through a grimace.

“Oh, right,” Hawke said, face dropping.

Anders wasn’t there, so putting Fenris back together was something of a team effort. A laborious team effort involving needles and an abundance of health potions, but one thankfully free of everyone’s usual hissing at each other. Well, except for Fenris. Fenris was hissing, but that was mostly just from the pain, so it was to be expected.

The moment he could speak, he gruffly dismissed Merrill’s thanks.

“We are companions,” Fenris said. “It means nothing. You have—that is to say, we all have done as much for each other.”

“But…” Merrill was about to object. No one had taken a sword to the gut for her before, especially not someone who openly hated everything she stood for, like Fenris did. But then, she sat back and thought for a moment.

This sort of thing has been going on for a while between all of them. Anders would heal her right in the nick of time, no matter what he thought of her blood magic. She’d thrall an enemy about to give Fenris a good swipe, no matter what he’d said to her in the past. Aveline would call Isabela a whore in the Hanged Man but leap to defend her in the heat of battle. Isabela would return the favor, slicing down Aveline’s more persistent opponents with an elegant backstab.

They all saved each other. Possibly even as often as once a week. None of them–not even Fenris–was going to let her die in battle any more than her clan would.

“You didn’t have to take a sword for me though,” she pointed out.

“I thought I could deflect it.”

“Still.”

Fenris shuffled, lines of disgust wrinkling his face, showing how little he wanted her gratitude. “Do not thank me,” he started, voice sounding a bit chilly. “I would not have…”

“Oh, hush,” Isabela interrupted, giving him a gentle flick. “Don’t ruin your moment, hero.”

Fenris made a face, his ears pulling back. Merrill had to giggle at that.

“Fenris, you do care!” Hawke boomed, and seemed to be wiping away a tear.

“No,” Fenris groused.

“I’m telling Varric.”

“No.”

“I bet he’ll get all kinds of inspiration.”

_“Hawke.”_

Yet Fenris seemed in a rather good mood on their way down from Sundermount. He didn’t snap at her or put her down once. He seemed to even quirk a smile at Hawke’s and Isabela’s jokes. And maybe he wouldn’t accept her thanks, but no matter what he said, she would have been dead without him.

He looked out for her. They all looked out for each other.

Merrill kept this moment close to her heart. She thought of it, every time Isabela and Aveline spat at each other, or Anders and Fenris sneered at each other, or her. Because no matter how harsh the words became, they all would defend her. They moved instinctively now, leaping to each other’s defense, attacking when another could not. Like a clan. Like family.

She kept it in mind every time she felt ready to scream back. Even on Sundermount, when she was weeping over Pol’s body, hearing him behind her.

_You are a monster._

Because, it couldn’t matter as much as the times he stood between her and the enemy. Words couldn’t mean more than a sword in the gut to defend her.

…Right?

* * *

“Fenris.”

“Hawke.”

Merrill grips her staff, ready for the unthinkable even as she desperately wishes it away. She’s glad that Hawke’s here, drawing Fenris’s gaze. She doesn’t know if she could look him in the eye now, knowing what he’s chosen, what he’s here for.

“You don’t have to do this,” Isabela says, a little desperate. “You don’t have to be here at all. This isn’t your fight. Just leave, enjoy your freedom…”

Merrill can remember Isabela and Fenris leaning on each other late at night at the Hanged Man, Fenris’s face buried in Isabela’s neck as Isabela ran fingers through his hair. She could remember giggles, sly winks between the two and gentle touches, promising more. Was he remembering any of that, now? Did it make him want to leave and stand by Isabela’s side, or make him feel that she should have left to stand by his?

Fenris doesn’t even look at Isabela. His eyes are fixed on Hawke, even as he responds. “You think I will let another Imperium take root here?”

“They aren’t magisters, Fenris!” Hawke, who had never made much of an issue of this before, was nearly shrieking. “And they’ve had nothing to do with this! They’re locked in, caged—I thought freedom meant something to you.”

“It does.” Fenris is terrifyingly focused. “That’s why I must do this.”

He’s as quick then as he was that day on Sundermount. Hawke’s not quite as fast. Merrill had never needed to compare them before, never even given thought to who would be stronger in battle. They had always been on the same side after all. It was always a given, them against Carta thugs, against slavers, against the world. All of them. Together.

Hawke’s losing.

Merrill wishes she could close her eyes, and wait for it to be over. She wishes she could open them up and wake up to a morning where none of this had happened. She wishes she could sit back and do nothing, and have it all turn out to be somewhat okay. But she doesn’t know if okay is a possibility. And Hawke… Hawke is too slow.

Merrill doesn’t close her eyes.

She makes a cut, and Fenris is too focused on Hawke to see it coming.

* * *

There isn’t time to hold a service afterwards. Not really. But they manage it anyway.

“Did he have anyone else?” Merrill asks quietly. “Any other friends besides…?”

But she doesn’t know if they count as his friend—if they ever counted at all.

“Shit,” Varric says, looking about thirty years older after the battle. “I… Sebastian?”

“Well,” Hawke replies, voice wavering and eyes red. “ _Shit._  Shit, shit, shit…”

Ultimately, funeral ceremonies are simple. Burn the body, put the ashes in an urn, say a few words over it. Sebastian isn’t there to say the prayers Fenris might have wanted, so instead they are all left to commemorate.

“Fenris was a good man,” Aveline says, “And a good friend. It was a privilege to know him all these years.”

“You gave us a great story, Broody,” Varric says. “Wish you had written us a better ending.”

“It was my fault,” Hawke says. “I could have made him understand. I should have made him understand.”

“Six years,” Isabela says, “Six years free, and many more to come now that you’d gotten rid of that old bastard. But you had to take all that, and choose this.”

“I…” Anders seems unsure, as though he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to speak among them anymore. “I never thought I’d feel… I never thought I’d say this and mean it but I didn’t want things to end like this for him.”

They all turn to her, at the end. She’s the last to speak, and as she looks down she realizes she has nothing to say. She has nothing but images. Card night in the Hanged Man’s dim light. Moments of shared laughter, shared blood, shared battle. That day on Sundermount when she’d worked with Hawke and Isabela for hours to patch him together–because he’d risked himself for her.

How little it had all mattered, in the end.

_“Dareth shiral,_  Fenris,” Merrill says, finally, because she has nothing else left in her.  _“Falon’Din enasal enaste.”_

Merrill is the one to light the flame. She doesn’t close her eyes as the body crumbles away. They sweep up the ashes, and later Isabela scatters them into the ocean as they flee from the Templars.

From there, they easily break apart. Aveline and Varric stay in Kirkwall, with duty and familiarity. Anders departs in the dead of night without so much as a goodbye. Shortly after he does, Merrill realizes the rest is only a matter of time. Hawke and Isabela’s words to each other become sharper and their eyes start to drift to different horizons. Merrill decides to leave before either of them. The goodbye is quick, clean, empty.

They were not a clan. They were not family. They were not her people.

Merrill has no people, now.


End file.
